Along with the popularization of the Internet and digital cameras, landscape images sensed by cameras are published on the Internet, and the landscape images around the country can be observed via the Internet. As a method of publishing such landscape images, a method of publishing an image as a part of a World Wide Web Page described using HTML is known. Also, a service that publishes image data in the form of an on-line album is known.
Keywords such as place names and the like and comments sprinkled with place names are often appended to such images, and an image search can be conducted using a keyword.
However, with the aforementioned related art, when the user observes a given landscape image, and wants to observe other landscape images near that place, he or she cannot easily acquire other images. This is because even when images near that place are published, they are not always searched using place names. Even if such images can be searched using place names, many inappropriate images are often extracted as search results by a search process conducted using place names, and it is difficult to find appropriate images from them. Also, the user can hardly recognize the positional relationship between the currently observed landscape image and other landscape images.
For example, when the user observes a landscape image of a given street, he or she often need to observe landscape images after he or she goes along that street. In this case, even when the user extracts the first landscape image based on a street name, he or she cannot always find a landscape image which is right down this street by a similar search process. Even if the user can find such image, he or she cannot easily recognize their positional relationship.
According to Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-140731, an image display apparatus which prepares a plurality of composite images of a virtual space, and selectively displays these images to allow a user to experience walkthrough of the virtual space is disclosed. Also, composite images are not actually taken images.
However, such apparatus which implements walkthrough display cannot display an arbitrary combination of a plurality of images held at distributed locations.